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Hella Sweet Lemons Car of the Week: Gone in 60 Characters Ford Contour SVT

We tend to think of the best 24 Hours of Lemons cars as oddballs, garage-engineering masterpieces (or disasters), or unlikely race machinery for road racing. However, occasionally a Lemons car’s greatness hinges upon one really good idea, like the Gone in 60 Characters Ford Contour SVT.

Contour SVT

From most angles, this regular to California races since 2016 looks like a relatively mundane mid-size Ford Contour, albeit the “hot” 200-horsepower SVT version. However, a view from the rear reveals…

Contour SVT

…and LED crawl. And where is it sourced from, you may ask?

Contour SVT

That number on the side is not just the car’s race number. Rather, you can send a text message to 424-CONTOUR (424-266-8687) during race weekends. The team is made up of programmers who wrote some a fairly straightforward code that just forward texts directly to the LED board. They have plans to enhance the LED board eventually, but for now, it does just fine.

Contour SVT

As you can imagine, Lemons racers (*cough* and staff *cough*) don’t use this to have juveniles words and phrases crawling across the back of Gone in 60 Characters.

Contour SVT

Like the NyanCar BMW, this is one that never gets old to Lemons staff. Is it competitive, quick, or reliable? Not at all, but it is awesome and much deserving as a Hella Sweet Lemons Car of the Week.

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